Friday, March 28, 2008

I was experimenting with color in this morning's drawing session, but I could never get the skin tones to work quite right. I feel okay about the picture anyway, but just in case it's not enough I'll include some conceptual development from Chicken Little: Ace in Action. This was the original design for Abby's fighter, before they changed it to a hovercraft. I wanted her ship to mix the trendy feminine Volkswagon Beetle-esque look with the military purpose of her fighter.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Some drawing session paintings just work, and others I decide aren't worth posting by themselves. The smart part of my brain says that means I shouldn't be posting them now either, but the stupid part of my brain hopes that nobody will notice even though I'm drawing attention to their deficiencies. I do like lots of things about these though, despite their various problems.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

For those who were guessing, the version I'm noodling around with is Prokofiev's Cinderella. My wife and I went to see the ballet here a while back, and I've been obsessed with the idea of fleshing out a storybook or animated version ever since. What I find most interesting about Prokofiev's version is not only its unique variation on the story, but the sort of wistful tension that exists throughout the music, even in the playful and happy parts. I haven't found an appropriate style to match the mood of the music, but I'm working on it.

In Prokofiev's Cinderella, her father is still alive, but he's too old and broken in spirit to prevent the abuse she suffers. I like to picture that his weakness comes only partly because of age---so my idea is that he never quite recovered from the grief of his first wife's death, and the oppressive nature of his second marriage has worn him down completely. I wanted him to look like a lord or duke of some sort, someone whose family would be invited to the Prince's ball, and whose moderate wealth would attract the attention of an ambitious lady with spoiled daughters. I tried to reflect all these ideas in the design of his face.

Sorry the colors are so muddy, but I did it quickly (and figured it worked for someone who had lost the will to live anyway).

Friday, March 07, 2008

I wanted to give people a peek at how I develop my character designs---lots of drawings, writing ideas in the margins, thinking about how to tie the look of the character to his/her personality and purpose, developing the costume designs, etc.

This is for a personal project I'm working on (mostly for fun). 5 points for anyone who guesses the project, 100 points for guessing which version I'm doing.